Blog – Robert Lalonde – Authorhttps://robtlalonde.com
Fast-paced suspense thrillersThu, 13 Dec 2018 13:24:16 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.1Some Rules Are Meant To Be Brokenhttps://robtlalonde.com/some-rules-are-meant-to-be-broken/
https://robtlalonde.com/some-rules-are-meant-to-be-broken/#commentsSat, 14 May 2016 17:23:04 +0000http://robtlalonde.com/?p=291One of my pet peeves as a reader is the overuse of dialogue tags. I find unnecessary dialogue tags to be awkward and clunky. They slow the natural flow of the conversation and past a certain point, the technique begins to insult my intelligence.

It is a rule in writing that all dialogue should have tags before or after someone speaks. Because it is a rule, we are supposed to follow it whether it makes sense or not. It can get quite annoying as writers struggle to find new ways to deal with dialogue while still following the rules.

Many authors get creative and try to dress up tags in an effort to make them less boring and repetitive. That’s why we see things like this:

When speaking, we find Bill has cried, sighed or snorted the words. At other times, he’s bellowed, howled and wheezed. Bill has even been heard to have chortled words as authors try to take the pain out of dialogue tags.

In journalism school writers are taught there are only two words they should use with dialogue: said and asked – after all, a news report should contain just the facts. No need to dress it up.

Let’s See How This Works

Let’s say there are two characters in the scene, Bill and Jane. It is early morning and Jane has just made a pot of coffee.

“Would you like toast and coffee,” Jane asked.

“I’d love toast and coffee,” Bill said.

Jane asked, “Do you take cream and sugar?”

“No thanks, I take my coffee black, “ Bill said.

“Plain or buttered toast?” Jane asked.

“Buttered please,” said Bill.

I’ll keep this short because it is already enough to make the point. Imagine reading a book that has a fair amount of dialogue and you can see why writers start to change it up by saying Bill wheezed or he snorted.

So let’s change it up and see if it helps:

“Would you like toast and coffee,” Jane asked.

“I’d love toast and coffee,” Bill replied.

Jane cooed, “Do you take cream and sugar?”

“No thanks, I take my coffee black, “ whispered Bill.

“Plain or buttered toast?” Jane fussed.

“Buttered please,” Bill laughed.

There are a ton of options when it comes to changing it up, but we end up in the same place. The tags become more and more annoying as the amount of dialogue increases on the page. Tags also add detail that may or may not fit the story.

Personally, I find unnecessary dialogue tags to be awkward and clunky. Past a certain point, this technique also begins to insult my intelligence. I don’t need to be told who is doing the talking at each line. As a reader, I feel like I’m being treated like a child or a halfwit.

Sometimes Less Is More

Let’s try it with just an introductory tag and see if it is any better:

Again, we’ve already been told that there are only two characters in the scene, Bill and Jane. It is early morning, and Jane has just made a pot of coffee..

“Would you like toast and coffee,” Jane asked.

“I’d love toast and coffee.”

“Do you take cream and sugar?”

“No thanks, I take my coffee black.”

“Plain or buttered toast?”

“Buttered please.”

Doesn’t that flow better? Was it hard to follow? Are you offended because I omitted the dialogue tags?

The Grammar Police

There is no doubt that some will be offended by the lack of dialogue tags, just as I am bored to tears when I am faced with page after page of dialogue where the characters said, asked, clucked, chuckled, bustled and flapped etc.

I think you can guess which technique I use in my books. It is a fact of life that you can’t please everyone, but I am banking on the idea that there are more people who enjoy the cleaner writing style.

How do you feel about language tags? Do you agree this a case where less is more?

]]>https://robtlalonde.com/some-rules-are-meant-to-be-broken/feed/19Jinxed – A Nick Borman Thriller Book 2https://robtlalonde.com/a-nick-borman-thriller-book-2/
https://robtlalonde.com/a-nick-borman-thriller-book-2/#respondSun, 17 Apr 2016 17:32:34 +0000http://robtlalonde.com/?p=273That’s me, hard at work on book 2 of The Nick Borman series. The working title is Jinxed

Synopsis:

Shelton Montgomery should be on top of the world. He’s been named Man of the Year and he’s on the cover of Time Magazine.

The shares for his company (NAT) New Age Technologies should be skyrocketing, but they’re not – they’re plummeting, probably because of two recent murders.

The victims were scientists who worked for NAT. Now, the other employees are wondering who’s going to be next.

Nick Borman needs to solve the puzzle and stop the string of murders before Shelton’s life and his business crumble.

Jinxed is Book 2 in the Nick Borman series

]]>https://robtlalonde.com/a-nick-borman-thriller-book-2/feed/0Does That Make Sensehttps://robtlalonde.com/does-that-make-sense/
https://robtlalonde.com/does-that-make-sense/#respondThu, 03 Mar 2016 21:27:03 +0000http://robtlalonde.com/?p=205I’ve just finished the first draft of The Borman Factor. It’s pretty exciting if you’re an author. Check the spelling, a few small edits and hit publish, right?

We all wish it was that easy, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. It’s hard to resist the urge to get it out and move on to the next one. But, once it’s out there, it’s out there.

After The First Draft

We all have our own process, but I include both redrafting and structural edits in the second phase. Afterwards, it’s ready for a review by beta readers and a final review, with edits in between. Then it’s time to publish.

In reality, everything is on the table at this point, not just text and structure.

Time To Step Back

I resisted the urge to jump in and start editing my first draft the minute it was done. I could be wasting a lot of time polishing up stuff I might throw out. So I thought I would take a bit of time to stand back and take a look at the project and ask a few tough questions about the big picture.

There’s no point spending a lot of time editing what I’ve got if I need to make major changes to some of my characters or the locations or the plot for that matter.

Does It Make Sense

I made a list of some hard questions that I would ask if I were doing an independent review of someone else’s work. I’m glad I did.

Here’s a list of questions I think should be answered right now:

Does my story make sense? Could it happen in real life?

Is the plot gripping and exciting or does it need spicing up?

Does the story flow or is it choppy in parts?

Do my lead characters come to life? I have a good picture in my mind for each of them, but does that come through in the story. Could the reader picture the characters in their mind’s eye?

Are the stakes high enough to drive the protagonist past the point of no return? Would the reader be right there with him?

Finally, is there enough of a worry factor for the reader? Would the reader worry about whether or not the hero is going to make it through to the end?

My Answers:

I’m pretty happy with my story as far as many of these points go, but not all – especially the first one. And that’s a big one isn’t it.

The problem lies at the very beginning. A police detective is murdered and one senior officer manages to stop a murder investigation all by himself. That’s a problem because cops tend to stick together, don’t they.

In real life they would all be fighting for an investigation; even the union would get involved!

How Did I Get There

When I started out, the protagonist (the hero of the story) was a city detective. His partner gets killed in broad daylight and that’s how it all started.

Then, I decided to change that. I wanted something a bit more exotic so I made Nick Borman a high level security expert. That’s more exciting and original, so off I went. And it sort of worked, except for one thing. It’s not realistic enough.

Suspension Of Disbelief

It’s common in science fiction and readers are usually willing to go along. But in a suspense/thriller novel, it is better if the premise makes sense. Sure, the hero often performs near impossible feats but the story itself needs to make sense or it’s hard to get interested.

So I had to ask: Does it make sense for an outsider, even if he is a security expert, to come in and solve the murder of a police officer? Is that something that could happen in real life? I guess it could happen, but it would make more sense for the dead cop’s partner to do it. And that’s not good.

The Solution

I was thinking about this as I was lying in bed last night. I kept waking up thinking I have to fix this. What should I do? Should I go back and make Nick a detective again?

I had a sinking feeling, something like the picture at the top of the page. It was keeping me up most of the night till finally, round 5:30 this morning, a new character was born. He’s still called Terry Reynolds. He still gets murdered. But now, he’s an award-winning journalist with the Toronto Star.

A half hour later, coffee in hand, I started making edits. I didn’t really have to change that much but I’m much more invested in the story now because it makes sense. Instead of a detective’s partner being killed at the beginning, it’s a really close friend who happens to be an award-winning reporter

]]>https://robtlalonde.com/does-that-make-sense/feed/0How Many Tweets Per Dayhttps://robtlalonde.com/how-many-tweets-per-day/
https://robtlalonde.com/how-many-tweets-per-day/#commentsSun, 28 Feb 2016 17:51:22 +0000http://localhost/robtlalonde/?p=144Here’s a question more people should ask: How many tweets per day is too many? While there is no one definitive answer, experts seem to think that 10 to 15 a day is optimal for most people or businesses. That figure might double if you have a large following or are a very public figure.

I was asking the question myself today as I went through my list of followers. I noticed that there were quite a few people who had more than 50,000 tweets in total so I took a look at who they were and whether or not they seemed to have a large following.

How Many Tweets Per Day

Mike Alton at Social Media Hat says that 10 – 12 a day is plenty for most businesses. He personally tweets 25 – 30 times but that’s because he’s a social media expert with a large following in different market segments. Buffer suggests 14 times a day on Twitter as being optimal. So let’s do a little math.

15 tweets a day x 365 days = 5,475 tweets a year.

Twitter was created in 2006. I guess that makes my 50,000 tweet cutoff a pretty good guess. And that’s for the people who’ve been on Twitter all along – most of us haven’t.

How Many Tweets Is Too Many

We all know people who do things to excess. Some people talk too much and others have the same kind of problem on social media. Some people post too often on Facebook for example. But if there is one social media site that really gets abused, it’s Twitter.

Fair warning: you might want to get a beverage of some sort before you read any further. It ain’t pretty folks!

I’m sure you’ve noticed your twitter feed get busier and busier as you picked up more followers. There’s another thing that makes your feed busy besides followers and that’s the out-of-control tweeters. You know, those people who sit at their keyboard and tweet every few seconds or minutes.

I took a look at my list of followers to see what was going on. I did this regularly when I only had a few hundred followers but I admit I lost control a long time ago. It takes longer as your list of followers grows and it’s easy to feel like it’s out of control.

Taming The Beast

I started by looking at the people who weren’t following me back. It seemed like a good place to trim some fat. Turns out, that was a heck of a good idea.

I was shocked at how many people I was following who were not following me back. Worse yet, many of them were tweetaholics – no pun intended.

I won’t mention any names, it’s too embarrassing. Well, alright, just a few:

NAME

TWEETS

FOLLOWERS

@*****Healing

33,000

3,400

@**Shadow7

33,000

600

@****Domican

46,000

900

@****be01

46,000

900

@****amamaven

82,000

18,000

@******eerJM

182,000

16,000

@***oder

206,000

8,000

@******Hedges

221,000

8,000

@******bytesnews

1,100,000

25,500

Did you notice that last entry? @******bytesnews has tweeted over 1 million times. Is that a record? Probably not, judging by what I’ve seen.

Trimming The Fat

Since none of the people on this list followed me back, I unfollowed all of them. Why should I let my twitter feed get bombarded daily by their tweets when they don’t care to see mine!

This is just a small sample of the accounts I unfollowed this morning. For the most part, I only unfollowed people with more than 50,000 tweets that were not following me back. I found well over one hundred.

The Serial Offenders

This is actually just the tip of the iceberg. I found a bunch of serial offenders – people who have tweeted well over 200,000 times. I had been following over a dozen people with a tweets count of between 200,000 to 450,000. That boggles the mind doesn’t it?

I feel I owe my Twitter followers an apology. Shame on me for not dealing with this sooner, and thank you for sticking with me despite the fact I’ve inadvertently allowed some of my followers to polute your Twitter stream.

How To Clean Up The Mess On Twitter

Start by unfollowing anyone with 50,000 tweets (more or less) that isn’t following you back. This takes time when you have several thousand accounts to go through but it’s worth the effort. Apps like Unfollowers make this much easier.

Go through your account once a month and keep weeding these people out. I’m sorry but I don’t want to see a hundred tweets a day from anyone.

Managing Twitter

If you have more than a few hundred followers and you’re still using the twitter interface, take a look at Tweetdeck. It’s an app by Twitter that makes your twitter feed fit for humans. It allows you to put people in lists and you can then simply view the tweets coming from one or more lists at a time.

If someone is tweeting too much, you can remove them from the list without unfollowing much like you can stop seeing posts from someone on Facebook without unfollowing them.

What are your thoughts? How do you deal with overly active tweeters? What tools do you use with Twitter?

]]>https://robtlalonde.com/how-many-tweets-per-day/feed/4A Better WordPress Theme!https://robtlalonde.com/a-better-wordpress-theme/
https://robtlalonde.com/a-better-wordpress-theme/#respondSat, 27 Feb 2016 02:23:13 +0000http://localhost/robtlalonde/?p=1Every time I start a new website, I always look around for that perfect theme. You know, that one theme that’s user friendly, has all the features you could want, isn’t too expensive and LOOKS GREAT!

Have I found it yet?

It’s too early to tell. The jury’s still out!

What I can tell you is that I am now on my fifth premium wordpress theme. Why? Because every theme I’ve bought so far has been lacking in some way. Lacking enough that I am willing to go through the process of familiarizing myself with a new theme once again – or maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment, but I don’t think so.

For the last site I built I used the Avada theme. Avada is one of the best selling themes of all time. It was pretty good all in all, but it has one major flaw. BLOAT!

Review of X Theme

For this site I settled on the X Theme. I looked at a whole bunch of themes and I even tried a couple of them, but I wasn’t pleased with the results. The reason I settled on X is because it’s packed with features and options but it doesn’t sacrifice speed. And that’s important.

You can expect to spend a bit of learning time up front before you can use the X theme to its full potential. I would recommend a day to read the documentation and watch a few training videos before you get started. It will save you from making mistakes and will make the process much more enjoyable.

I’ve seen a lot of posts marketing the X Theme as being the ultimate WordPress theme. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. It does have a lot going for it.

Flexibility

X has four stacks which are in fact completely different designs for a site. If that weren’t enough, each stack can be customized. You can mix and match from one design to the other. This puts a lot of design power at your fingertips without ever touching code.

In addition to stacks, X theme comes with a lot of shortcodes and plugins. There are shortcodes for pricing tables, growth bars, animated counting numbers, columns, buttons, and lots more. X even comes with a plugin to maintain all of your customization if you want to change the theme!

Bloat

Bloat and poor coding is common in premium themes. The amount of code required to provide tons of features can slow down a site and can often cause conflicts with other plugins.

X has a lot of features, but they only load on the pages where they are used. The total install package is only 5.5mb. Sites built with X theme tend to load very quickly even when contain lots of graphics!

Pricing

X Theme currently costs $63 US and is available for download on Themeforest. $63 is a reasonable price considering the features and plugins that are included in the theme.

As with most premium themes, you have to purchase a license for each site you use it on.

Conclusion

There’s a learning curve with any new theme. That’s not that big of a deal especially if you might end up using the theme on other sites.

I’m happy with X so far. It’s fast page load times makes it a clear winner over Avada which is currently the biggest seller on Themeforest. It’s early to say, but I may have finally found a theme I can stick with on any new site I decide to build.

X has excellent design, it’s easy to customize and it has killer shortcodes to make my blog posts look great AND it loads fast. What more could you want?